#And all the rest

[elkian]

More about GGG's finale and core plot (that is, BIG SPOILERS BELOW)

One recurring trend is loneliness. King's actions help connect people, and our protagonist continues in her footsteps, but the loneliness of the characters who play antagonists is especially notable.

The God Awards (which I've mentioned before, the whimsy of them made me totally blip over the red flags and implications) mention Inspekta doing everything for them. What would they be without him, Capochin asks?

"Lonely!"

Inspekta gathered the lonely hearts together. Gave them purpose. Gave them a charismatic leader to follow.

Saul is one of the most antagonistic non-Bizzy humans, and a recurring refrain in Milldread is how lonely everyone is. How gatherings are now somehow either discouraged or outright illegal (hmm, wonder whose idea that was). In fact, most of the Milldread citizens only have good or at least compassionate things to say about him.

(Sometimes I feel like the antagonists are shown a little much compassion given the way this plot goes, but it is also important to remember that deprogramming cultists etc. is based around showing compassion and reminding them that the world is not innately hostile to them. And there's only so much a single game can say in the span of a few hours, so, like, I get it.)

In fact, you have to insult Saul twice to progress in Milldread. How do you do this?

One, you get a dog to make a dog noise, and Saul loses it and comes over to harass the dog (and fail).

Two, after this point, he'll say that he "hates that shaggy little man". This is the line you need to give Budd to progress. When he asks for an insult levied at Saul, you can travel the town... and find that everyone has good things to say about him. He's misled, he's actually very sweet, his friends miss him.

It's very telling that the only way to effectively insult Saul to Budd is to use his own words to do it. Even writing this, I realize that this also implies a bit of a persecution complex with Saul - the people around him don't hate him, or even think he's particularly incompetent. They're worried about him. They understand that he's stressed. He was lead astray by a bad element but he snaps out of it (with help) in time to rejoin his community.

And speaking of throwing words back in faces...

Capochin shows a pretty regular skill for recognizing voices when you fling words at him - it's funny, because a lot of people in this game don't, so he's an outlier and that's amusing. In the battle against him, it means you have to work around him - you can't use his own words against him directly.

Instead, you put words in "Inspekta"'s mouth and bring that to Capo.

He shows an awareness, to a level, that this isn't really Inspekta talking. But this realization is a long time coming, and he can't repress it anymore. He can't deny reality when it's thrown in his face, when he's all alone, when nobody wants to work with him anymore. When even his god is only using him, spending more time with the Godpoke, leading him astray.

The Bizzyboys (and Hector; Yugo Limbo said that all of them come from Drain, hence them looking alike(?) ) evoke a very specific type of person, to me: the incel. Or at least, something adjacent. They're all referred to as "he" as Bizzys (I'm of a mind that Bizzyboys are all he/him while Bizzy, as, like, an honorary gender, mostly because it's just a silly idea; though in retrospect it also meshes with the enforced similarity situation). They're all lonely. They've banded together under a mutual purpose, but they don't really support each other.

And when they start to, between Hobbyhoo and BuzzHuzz? When they begin to collaborate, talk about taking a break from all this fash shit "investigating"?

Capochin shuts them down. Hard.

And Patty says he's scared of Capochin, but the other Bizzies say he would never hurt any of them. But when Capochin blows his top, all of them get really timid.

Capochin not getting involved in the violence until there's literally no one else to hide behind is so cliche that it almost just seems like a joke, until I took in the rest of the story.

Playing this game makes me think a lot of Fallout: New Vegas, a game where you can also destroy fascism and avert a cataclysm as a vaquero-themed courier.

One thing that becomes achingly clear in FNV is how the Legion is a cult of personality: it's not just the Legion, it's Caesar's Legion. Legate Lanius is terrifying, yes, but nobody talks about him as a leader so much as a warrior. Once Caesar dies, it seems obvious to me that the entire thing is going to crumple like a house of cards. Caesar didn't leave any backup plans, any true heirs, because the whole thing was his vanity project. There's no point to the Legion without Caesar, and he never once considered that there should be.

Inspekta and the Bizzyboys work very similarly. The whimsy and goofiness of the setting, which we also see in Smile For Me, lead me to miss some major red flags (I am also just. very dense.), which is a known problem in real fascism - the use of cutesy facades to cast absurdity on any claims of propaganda.

Anyways. My point is that the Bizzyboys seem at first to be a group, but are really more underlings in a cult of personality. Everything falls apart when faith in the system - in Capochin, in Inspekta - is lost. And Capochin is the Joshua Graham to Inspekta's Caesar; both of them culpable, both of them seeming in charge, with Capochin primed to take the fall as soon as things go wrong. But he volunteered for that! He wanted to be Inspekta's #1! The right-hand chump! The prime goon! He's getting everything he ever worked for, so don't question the system, Capo, because that's the same as doubting Inspekta. And doubting Inspekta means you're not a good Bizzyboy. Means you're ungrateful. Means that maybe what you have should go to someone who'll appreciate it.

They literally have their names stripped away - and I think the constant belittling and name-withholding of Patty, who genuinely displays real competence and intelligence at points if you pay attention, is a deliberate ploy. You don't want to be like P. You don't want to be a failure. Look at you, earning your letters! You almost have a full name! Not like that loser at the bottom of the barrel. You're a real winner, here.

And you, P? You need to try harder. Look how Alexei has his whole name back for doing hardly anything! How can you fail to get even a single letter back, compared to him? When Patty asks for his name back in Milldread, Capochin mentions solving mysteries - mysteries of "what does Capochin want for lunch", etc. It's silly, but it's also sinister. It's the most overtly self-centered bit of Bizzy lore we get for maybe the whole game. Capochin outright says he comes first and we laugh because of the delivery.

(The videos are fantastic, because they really set up the reveal in a lot of both subtle and unsubtle ways. Even the very first video, where Capochin insults Patty for asking a scripted question, before moving into the answer, is foreshadowing for the constant emotional abuse all of the Bizzys and Patty in particular are subjected to. There's probably much more I'm forgetting.)

Under the whimsy and humor of the game is a very real statement about cults and fascism and the kinds of people they recruit, and how they do it. They amplify the concerns of the disenfranchised and alone, people who have difficulty connecting with a community. They give those people somewhere to belong, ideals to uphold, and targets to gang up on.

Anyways. Good game.

[blumineck]

When one arrow isn't enough...

[thorinds]

The Hobbit trilogy (2012-2014), dir. Peter Jackson

[saiyanmazen]

Just noticed that Piccolo isn't clapping. Is... is he sad that no one congratulated him on not being evil anymore?

[tiraam]

As I’ve decided to never wonder into the driver tags again, please hit me up if you’re a respectful fan and I’ll follow you 🧡 from now on I’ll just stay on my following page.

I don’t care which driver you support as long as you don’t post anti messages. Respectful discussions are always welcome but not full on hate and disrespect as if you actually know these people!

[firedragon1321]

Fun fact- child!me was able to identify one of the Digimon storyboard artists by instinct.

Masahiro Naoi did storyboard art for a few episodes. I remember Prisoner of the Pyramid and Sora's Crest of Love, though there are definitely more. In these episodes, everyone is weirdly...off model.

All the above screenshots were from one of the two episodes I mentioned- both heavy hitters when it comes to their writing. Prisoner of the Pyramid solidifies a lot of lore and sets up for Tai's Crest of Courage activating. Sora's Crest of Love...well, I bet you can guess from the name. But it's a Crest activation episode, plus it establishes Sora's backstory. I love both of these episodes. So it's a little disappointing that the animation looks...like that.

I know the animation industry can suck sometimes and I don't blame anyone for being under the effects of crunch. It could even be the case here. But this "off-model-ness" only happened with this one storyboard artist, to the point I associated it with him over the years.

My clue-in as a child was Tai's hair. All I cared about was fluffiness. It's distinctly shorter and therefore less fluffy.

I used to call him the "bad animator" (for which I apologize greatly- first because he's a human being just like me, second because he's a storyboard artist). I was a simple person. I just wanted fluffy Tai hair. I knew the other storyboard artists provided- just not this one. And that was the extent of it at the time.

But I feel like most kids wouldn't notice? The writing in these two episodes is so solid that even most adults would brush off the animation. Of course, drawing and monkeying with this art style means I was destined to notice sooner or later.

This was a formative moment in discovering the behind-the-scenes aspects of cartoons. It wasn't the definitive moment (that would be Pokemon, when I learned the show comes from Japan and gets dubbed into English at age ten). But it's something I find interesting as an adult.

[airlocksandaviaries]

When I say I want my ships jealous and overprotective, I don’t mean it in the possessive, edgy, “nobody can touch them but me” way. When I say jealous I mean “I’m so in love with them, it makes me sooo sad that someone else is making them happy because I wish that was me” and when I say overprotective, I mean “I love them so much that nothing hurts me more than seeing them in pain, and I would do anything to stop that.”

[being-of-rain]

In the days before The Legend of Ruby Sunday, I thought to myself 'RTD did a lot of big bombastic series finales in his day, and always with Classic Who villains. But that was fifteen years ago. Maybe he's mellowed.' Dear readers, he had not.

Here's my thoughts on the episode! But fair warning, they're mostly that it was just okay. I mean it was fine. It was a fun, mindless bit of build-up and spectacle. Of course it was very much a Part One, so a lot of my thoughts are just 'I wonder where this will go next episode.'

Firstly, I don't think I'm a massive fan of RTD's method of story arcs, which is to sprinkle references to something throughout a season that'll be part of the final story without much elaboration. It feels less like a story, and more like a drawn-out teaser for the finale. And continuing a trend that started in RTD's last full season that I'm not crazy about, there was so many arcs and plot hooks too. Before the episode my brother and I listed as many we could think of, and it actually addressed almost all of them, plus one or two we forgot about or thought wouldn't come back. It started to feel like the characters were ticking off a shopping list of questions. And I know that these things basically just exist for fans to speculate about. And I can't pretend I didn't have fun joking and memeing about all the arc elements with other fans. But as someone who both isn't really that interested in genuinely theorising about how a series is going to end (odd for a Dr Who fan, I know) and who really likes story/character arcs that develop over time, I guess I'm just not the target audience. This season the arcs have pricked my curiosity, but not much more than that - except make me wish they did more with the supernatural elements than a few badly-conceived gods and the cool fairy circle episode.

Anyway, Sutekh! In the last few years the TV show has done the Morbius Doctors, Beep the Meep, the Toymaker, the Shalka Doctor... I really shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore, but I still sit in bemused shock when a finale revolves around Susan and Sutekh. And that is pretty fun. We had basically nothing of Sutekh this episode, so I'm very interested what the next episode will do with him.

I'm especially curious how much it'll dip into the Egyptian mythology aspect. Because on one hand, Pyramids of Mars is sorta built on the problematic and awkward trope that aliens at least inspired Egyptian culture. On the other hand, I think the Egypt link & aesthetic is a big part of Sutekh's identity as a villain/monster. I remember being bored when Big Finish tried to divorce him from it in their latest audio with him (but tbh I trust RTD to at least do a more entertaining story than that, even if he's boiling Sutekh down into simply a God of Death). Similarly, I think a really big part of why Sutekh made a big impact on the original Dr Who fandom is how he was a genuine overwhelming threat to the Doctor, something that probably won't be as big of a shock today. But the final part of Sutekh's identity is Gabriel Woolf, and he's absolutely as entertaining as ever.

As for Susan, after all that drama it'd almost be stranger if she didn't appear in some form in the finale. I'm wondering if Mrs Flood is Susan, something that's really weird to say seriously after thinking people were wrong about her being an important character for 6 months. At the very least I really hope they give Carole Ann Ford some kind of cameo, because it'd be such a missed opportunity if the very first companion actress was still alive and they didn't do anything with her.

What else? Mel continues to be lovely, and I continue to wonder if there's any reason it was her in particular who was brought back or if it was just to have a classic Who companion hanging around. Rose continues to be precious, and her instant bonding with Ruby is just adorable. I missed Ruth Madeley's Shirley, I assume it was filming conflicts that led to her being replaced by a preteen? When Harriet was introduced I distinctly remember thinking 'oh she's cute, I hope she sticks around.' And the Vlinx continues to have 1-2 lines and no explanation.

The VHS-powered time window was an extremely cool concept, but I feel like it didn't look as good and distinct as it could have. I'm not totally certain what I'd have done different but I still felt underwhelmed. And I'll say something I've said a lot, but I wish there was at least some vague rules to things like the time window. I don't care about scientific accuracy or real life logic, only narrative logic; if anything can happen with only a bit of poetry to justify it, the stakes and losses and victories aren't nearly as satisfying.

And this might make me sound like someone who looks for anything to complain about, but I feel there's something off about how UNIT is depicted recently. Like it's being glorified and simplified as 'the good guys' maybe more than it has any time before in the TV show's history. And it feels especially awkward when some of the UNIT characters are armed and armoured soldiers. I'm just very not in the mood to heroise someone who I might see committing war crimes on the news, you know. So I'm not really a fan of this version of UNIT and how it's consuming so many past companions.

Anyway!

Mystery Woman 1 (Susan): Sutekh. Mystery Woman 2 (Mrs Flood): Susan? Mystery Woman 3 (Ruby's mum): At this point I have to assume it's the Rani or Iris Wildthyme or Gillian Who or something.

[doks-aux]

Sam coming back into Izzy's life after so many years, and Izzy doesn't laugh anymore, he doesn't sing anymore, he barely smiles. and it breaks Sam's heart, but he loves the Izzy that scowls and yells and storms around, too. and he'll help him remember how to do the other stuff if he wants

[crowystcrow]

Okay so the government?

What do you guys think the government thinks/does about the different power ranger teams and their respective villains. Like you're telling me these towns are getting attack by aliens and monsters everyother week and then gaggle of (usually) 3-6 colored coded teenagers/young-adults show up and stops them and the government does NOTHING about it? Not to mention the GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS they use to defeat the villains?! I know some teams have being a power ranger literally as their job (ei. RPM or SPD) or the government has to at least be aware of them (ei. Samaria (cause it's a generational thing that's being going on for a long time)). But other teams like dino charge, jungle fury, mystic force even the orginal mighty morphin don't have that. Just some thoughts and doubt there are any out there but if anyone finds a fic like this feel free to let me know, I think it'd be hilarious to see governments interacting with teenagers/young adults who fight monsters for a living, have magical powers and shit and doing their job for/better than them.

[saltygilmores]

Thoughts While Watching Gilmore Girls: The Master Index

Season 1

Pilot 💗 The Lorelais First Day At Chilton 💗Kill Me Now 💗 The Deer Hunters 💗 Cinnamons Wake 💗Rory's Birthday Parties 💗 Kiss and Tell 💗 Love and War and Snow 💗 Rory's Dance 💗 Forgiveness and Stuff 💗 Paris is Burning 💗 Double Date 💗 Concert Interruptus 💗 That Damn Donna Reed 💗 Christopher Returns 💗 Star Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers 💗 The Breakup Part II 💗 The Third Lorelai 💗 Emily In Wonderland 💗 PS I Love You 💗 Love Daisies and Troubadors 💗

Season 2

Sadie Sadie 💗 Hammers & Veils 💗Red Light On The Wedding Night 💗Road Trip to Harvard 💗 Nick & Nora & Sid & Nancy 💗 Presenting Lorelai Gilmore 💗Like Mother Like Daughter 💗 The Inns and Outs of Inns 💗 Run Away Little Boy 💗 Bracebridge Dinner 💗 Secrets and Loans 💗Richard In Stars Hollow 💗 A Tisket a Tasket 💗 It Should Have Been Lorelai💗Lost & Found 💗 Theres The Rub 💗 Dead Uncles And Vegetables 💗Back in The Saddle💗 Lorelais Graduation Day💗I Cant Get Started

Season 3

Lazy Hazy Crazy Days 💗 Haunted Leg 💗 Application Anxiety 💗 One's Got Class The Other One Dyes 💗 8 O Clock At The Oasis 💗 Take The Deviled Eggs 💗 They Shoot Gilmores Don't They 💗 Let The Games Begin💗Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving 💗 That'll Do Pig 💗 I Solemnly Swear 💗 Lorelai Out Of Water 💗Dear Emily and Richard 💗

Bonus Episode: A Vineyard Valentine

[lets-steal-an-archive]

To make up for the lost back end, streamers floated performance-based incentives. Schur describes a scenario in which a platform might promise a showrunner a $100,000 bonus for season one, $250,000 for season two, $500,000 for season three, and $1.7 million for season four. "So you’re like, Holy shit. This is great!" he says. There was a catch. Many seemingly successful series began to vanish after just a couple of seasons. "What no one saw coming was they’d just kill the show before they ever had to pay that money out," Schur says. “They kind of tricked everybody. Now if you get to 20 episodes, it’s a miracle."

[thorinds]

“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.”

[aziracrow-adventures]

This is brill. Are you normally in the North of England or is that just temporary? (I'm in the North of England so excited!)

I’m on holiday visiting my family and I’m really glad you like this 🩷

[chaos-le-mieux]

Undertale 9th Anniversary: ArcticTale

So busy this year. I started this one late, so I kinda had to rush it. And seeing how I'm gunna be busy the next few day, it's now or never to upload it, lol

My Submission for the Undertale Community Project: 2024 Hosted by: @arerona

No Chara's this year, well, except for the one from this AU.

ArcticTale is my Snow-Themed Undertale AU, which lines up with all my other Arctic themes if you've been a long term watcher of mine. Arctic Drift, my Splatoon OC group. And Arctic Arachne, my Sonic OC from way back when.

Should be no surprise I'd do the same with Undertale. Ice and Snow run thru me after all.

16 Characters, I'm glad I made ref's for them all, but still. I started on this less then a month ago, and normally I give myself 2 months to do big projects like this. so if it looks Rushed/Sloppy, it's cause it is, lol.

Anyway, I hope all the other community project participants also have fun with this. And can't wait to see everything compiled together ^ -^ Just 1 more week to go!!

Have Fun~

Undertale © Toby Fox